Pros

No fees (for now)

Although this may change in the future, for now this is a huge advantage for sellers. Lazada and 11Street take upwards of 6% for sales made on the platform.

Free shipping (for now)

For some sellers, Shopee is also footing the bill for shipping when a customer buys products worth more than RM25 from them. Customers are able to enjoy the benefit of free shipping for one check out a day.

Again, this offer on free shipping may not last forever, but for now it is an advantage for sellers as it makes your products appear cheaper to your customers.

Easy to upload and sell on mobile

As I mentioned earlier, compared to Lazada and 11Street, it is easy to upload products for sale on Shopee. You only need to follow three steps:

Step 1: Open the Shopee app and select the ‘Sell from Camera’ option after clicking on the ‘+’ button on the main screen:

Step 2: Take a picture of the product you want to sell using the in-app camera. Once you have taken a picture, you can even use filters to beautify your product photo if you wish:

Step 3: Describe the product and add details such as price, weight, color and shipping information:

Step 4: Upload the product and your product will be live on Shopee:

Pretty simple right?

Most people will have no problem understanding how to get started on Shopee. This may be the reason Shopee was able to get so many sellers in such a short period of time [source].

Chat function allows you to talk to potential buyers

There is an in-app chat feature that lets potential customers ask you questions directly about the product you are selling.

The good thing about this feature is that while it mimics the chat function of messenger apps like Whatsapp, you do not have to give away your private phone number if you do not want to.

The chat feature is easily accessible on each product page:

Easily link your Instagram photos to Shopee

It is easy to link the photos you have on Instagram to Shopee. This is especially useful for people who are already active sellers on Instagram.

You can upload your Instagram photos by selecting the ‘Sell from Instagram’ option when you click on the ‘+’ on the main page.

By doing this, you will be able to save a lot of time by syncing your Instagram photos to Shopee.

Sufficient Help Section for Sellers

Although the help section of Shopee app is not as comprehensive as Lazada’s, it sufficiently provides simple guides on common seller questions.

For most sellers, this is enough to help them with a lot of their daily questions on the platform.

Cons

No quality check on sellers on the platform

Shopee is a peer-to-peer selling platform which does not check and approve their sellers. This means that anyone can start selling on Shopee, even scammers.

It is possible that a potential customer of yours has been scammed before on Shopee and does not want to repeat the same mistake. They may become more wary than before, checking ratings and reviews as well as other factors before making a purchase.

This means if you are new, you may need to spend a lot of effort on making your offer attractive compared to other sellers on the platform.

This may mean spending some money on taking good photos and hiring a designer to make a professional logo for you.

High competition

Since almost anyone can start selling on Shopee, you are bound to face a high number of competitors who may be selling the same product as you.

This means that to compete with the other sellers on the platform you will need to work harder to make your offer more attractive compared to your competitors.

How to Start Selling on Shopee Malaysia

Keen to start selling on Shopee?

You can do it right now on your phone.

Step 1: Download the app

Download the app from your App or Play store:

Step 2: Register

Once you have downloaded the app, register an account on the Shopee app.

Step 3: Set up your seller account

Once you have registered an account on Shopee, you now have to register as a seller.

You can either use your own name or choose a brand name to sell.

Do note that even if you change your name to a brand name, if you have used Facebook to sign up, your Shopee URL will still be showing your personal name.

If you want to hide your personal name, I suggest that you not sign up on Shopee using your Facebook account. Use e-mail instead so you can customise the URL later.

Step 4: Upload products and start selling

If you already have photos of your products on your phone, simply select the products and complete the necessary description.

If you do not yet have the products, you can use Shopee’s internal camera app to upload them directly. But do take note that even if you use your mobile phone, clear photos will make your products more attractive than blurry photos.

Step 1: Register an account on Shopee.com.my

Step 2: Configure your seller account

Once you have signed up, all you need to do is go to this page to set up your seller account. You can do so by clicking on the ‘Sell’ link on the top left corner of the page:

Step 3: Upload products and start selling

If you choose to upload products using your laptop or desktop, you will need to take photos and load them into your computer first.

As you would have done in the app, add photos, description and other details to your product and you are ready to make it live on Shopee.

The Big Question: Will Your Products Sell on Shopee?

As I have mentioned in my previous articles [link], there are a few factors affecting whether your products will sell on any online marketplace.

Unlike 11Street, there are currently no ads that are available to be bought by sellers on the Shopee platform.

There are a few factors that can help you improve your sales, some of them are similar to what we have seen for the other two online marketplaces.

Keyword Results

As I have covered before, the simplest way to check if there is a demand for your product is to do a quick search on it. If you find that no one is selling your product yet, it may mean that there is little or no demand for your product.

But again, the keyword search is only meant as a guide. You can do further investigation to find out if there is demand for your product on Shopee.

Ratings and Reviews

Since Shopee does not check its sellers, customers are bound to be more careful about the sellers on Shopee.

Reviews are a way for buyer to know if a buyer is real and trustworthy. The more good reviews you have, the more trustworthy you appear.

For example, this pair of Elastic Waist Slacks has over 312 ratings with an average of 4.4/5 stars awarded.

Pictures

Good quality photos showing everything that a customer may want to see will help increase your sales. For the Elastic Waist Slacks, the seller uploaded nine photos to help their customer make the buying decision (here are two of them as sample):

Pricing

As I have mentioned before, since just about anyone can sell on Shopee, this makes Shopee a highly price-competitive platform to sell on.

This means that if you are selling the same products as more than 100 other sellers on Shopee, you will need to bring your price down in order to attract buyers.

Of course, if doing this does not make sense to your business, you may be better off selling products that have less competition.

Conclusion: Shopee is great for mobile users

Shopee is a great online marketplace for people who are always on their mobile phones. You do not need to have to purposely go to your laptop or desktop to start selling. Instead, you can do so at the convenience of your mobile phone.

So if you are someone who spends most of your time on your mobile phone, start selling on Shopee and make some money online.

They have a lot of VC investment. Their investors agree with the management that it is more important to grow Shopee’s seller and customer base before making profits since Lazada already had a stronghold of the e-commerce market in Malaysia when Shopee started. Therefore they are willing to keep burning money until they achieve their growth goals. After that, they will definitely start charging.

For now there is no sure way to know the exact search volume for keywords on Shopee, but you can make an informed guess by sorting items by ‘Top Sales’ and looking for the products with the most number of legitimate-looking reviews.

Hi Tan,
Not sure really. It may or may not end. Depends on what business model Shopee decides on in the long term. You can check the latest status by registering as a seller. They will notify you of any changes. Currently it is still zero commissions.

Can you explain more about this part?
1. If customer send out the products by their own, how Shopee bear the shipping fees?
2. How can a seller use the Shopee logistics to enjoy free shipping for customers with orders over RM30 for the first 5kg? Do seller need to keep their products in some sort of warehouse?
3. How Shopee calculate the first 5kg? Deduct from every customer order accumulatively?

1. After you key in your tracking number, Shopee will automatically check it to be a valid tracking number. If valid, upon order completion, Shopee will reimburse you. However, do note that this applies only for Poslaju shipments.
2. No, you don’t need to keep at own warehouse. You only need to use Shopee supplied consignment notes. However, there are conditions to be fulfilled before you can use this.
3. No. This is based on each order. Everytime the customer makes an order, the system will calculate using the seller supplied weight to see if they qualify for free shipping.

once customer order the things how am going to send my product? Should the seller pay for the shipping fee in advance? After that shopee will reimburse back for the seller? can you please clearly tell me how to do for the shipping part?

Yes, the shipping fee will be paid together with the product fee as a total sum. Once the order has confirmed been received by the buyer, then Shopee will release the payment to you together with your reimbursement.

Shopee is just a platform for you to list products for sale. Drop shipping is just a way for you to fulfill your orders. You can list any product on Shopee and find suppliers to help you dropship the products. But Shopee itself does not offer drop shipping as a service for its sellers. They have to make the arrangements externally themselves. Hope this clarifies. – Lu Wee

In Malaysia now Kumoten is one of the largest automatic dropship right now. But their prices are quite expensive. I recommend searching for suppliers manually. Just ask suppliers if they will be willing to do dropshipping.

To register as seller on Shopee, no need SSM. You can use your normal buyer account to sell. But for your own tax and legal reasons, try to get yourself at least a sole prop to keep yourself out of trouble from the law.

yeah, I’ve done sole props for some of my businesses. It’s not exactly compulsory to open a business bank account but I would recommend it. It’s not that hard for sole prop actually. But in any case, it will be speeded up if you have an introducer (i.e. someone who already has a current account at that bank).

Yes – you need to submit your annual tax – but tax is only chargeable above certain profit figures. So if you’re not earning money, you don’t pay tax, or if say your profits are below those brackets, you don’t pay tax.

Unfortunately, I’m not a lawyer or specialist in setting up companies so use anything I say as just reference. You can always go to SSM office to ask more questions, they are more qualified to answer most of your other queries.

Hi Miss,
may i ask about the free 5kg shipping part, does it mean shopee will pay for the first 5kg of the shipping fee and the rest will be pay by buyer right? And the first 5kg, does it have any amount limitation? For example, must be less than RM5 etc etc.

Unfortunately, that won’t be possible. As Malaysian, you need to register as Malaysian seller, and ship from Malaysia only. So if you do intend to do this, it’s better to send your items from Taiwan to a fulfillment centre in Malaysia and have them help you with the distribution.

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